On a drawing under the number 281, published more than a century ago, in the tenth volume of Cambridge’s Natural History, dedicated to mammals, not an ordinary human head was shown, but a sketch of the famous skull of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), one of the most significant thinkers of all times. You might be surprised, but the size of this skull was used as an excuse for the death and persecution of a great number of people.
Similar to its former bearer from Königsberg (present-day Kaliningrad in Russia), Kant’s skull left a mark in history, unfortunately leading to the development of a dark pseudoscience with monstrous consequences. When the big philosopher, famous for his modesty and clocklike, strict daily habits, died, leaving behind a huge philosophical and scientific heritage, without ever having left Königsberg, he was buried in his town with great honours.
On that occasion, his skull was separated from his body, and it was immediately noticed, what is clearly evident in the sketch (as well as in numerous Kant’s portraits), that the size of the cranial part, where the brain is contained, was larger than in an average human skull. The skull was therefore sketched to be thoroughly studied. It turned out that the discussion on the shape of Kant’s skull was to last the entire 19th century, and would lead to a more serious foundation of phrenology, the science of a human skull.
This quasi-science, originally developed as a parlour pastime, starts with the thesis that the human spirit and a person’s character are linked to the shape and size of the skull. With such premises, Kant’s head was considered a specimen of extraordinary intellectual powers, and the photograph of its mould was studied by all early phrenologists.
This type of research originated from the need to find new manners for human character interpretation, leading to the development of craniometry, once an integral part of anthropology. Craniometric measurements determine a string of numerical factors (for example, cranial index as the ratio between the height and length of a head), which along with the thereafter challenged assumption that human races exist, further enable classification into a particular race category.
Although Geman philosopher himself did not have anything with Nazi ideas, unfortunately, it turned out that phrenology would become particularly popular among the Nazis which secured an elegant, scientific basis for human classification. When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, it was literally ‘a skull victory’. Or to be more precise, the victory of dolichocephalic skulls.
There are few sciences, as well as pseudosciences, which have had such dark misuse, as phrenology had in Nazi Germany. Craniometric analyses developed into a state issue in 1935, when notorious racial laws were enacted in Nuremberg (the Reich Citizenship Law, the Law on the Protection of Genetic Health and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour). These laws introduced craniometric measurements into hospitals, schools and other institutions.
In death camps such as Buchenwald, where medical experiments were carried out, the index was a decisive factor in life or death. Generally, only dolichocephalic skulls, whose cranial index was larger than 80 were considered Aryan, while a low cranial index of brachycephalic skull meant their carriers did not belong to either of five sufficiently pure races whose members could be citizens of Germany. It was a numerical excuse for the holocaust and racial pogroms across Europe.
In the meantime, the Second World War was over, the Nazis and their legacy were eliminated, and the ideas of phrenology and other similar endeavours of ‘calculating racial traits’ have been long forgotten. Kant’s remains rest in the same town, just like two centuries ago, and in 1924, an impressive mausoleum was erected in honour of the legendary thinker in Königsberg. There is a certain irony that the town itself where the mausoleum is located and where everything started with Kant’s skull, has not been a part of Germany for a long time and that nowadays it represents the westernmost region of the Russian Federation.
S.B.
Illustration: Cambridge Natural History, Volume X—Mammalia, C. von Kupffer, fig. 281. / Wikimedia Commons